Search

In 2006, the Federal Collaboration on Health Disparities Research (FCHDR) identified the built environment as a priority for eliminating health disparities, and charged the Built Environment Workgroup with identifying ways to eliminate health disparities and improve health outcomes. Despite extensive research and the development of a new conceptual health factors framework, gaps in knowledge exist in areas such as disproportionate environmental and community hazards, individual and cumulative risks, and other factors. The FCHDR provides the structure and opportunity to mobilize and partner with built environment stakeholders, federal partners, and interest groups to develop tools, practices, and policies for translating and disseminating the best available science to reduce health disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite efforts to the contrary, disparities in health and health care persist in the United States. To solve this problem, federal agencies representing different disciplines and perspectives are collaborating on avariety of transdisciplinary research initiatives. The most recent of these initiatives was launched in 2006 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office of Public Health Research and the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Minority Health brought together federal partners representing a variety of disciplines to form the Federal Collaboration on Health Disparities Research (FCHDR). FCHDR collaborates with a wide variety of federal and nonfederal partners to support and disseminate research that aims to reduce or eliminate disparities in health and healthcare. Given the complexity involved in eliminating health disparities, there is a need for more transdisciplinary, collaborative research, and facilitating that research is FCHDR's mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]